By SAMUEL MORTEL
On one of the last few stops of JPEGMafia’s “Lay My Life Down” Tour, he made a long-awaited return to the city he was born in.
The doors of the concert venue “Terminal 5” opened at 7PM, and if you arrived then you were faced with a daunting line that wrapped all the way around the block… and then the next block. JPEGMafia, born Barrington DeVaughn Hendricks, is a good encapsulation of the modern “underground” music scene. Small enough to be completely unknown to the general public, but with enough success and a large enough cult following to sell out a decent-sized venue like Terminal 5 with a capacity of 3,000. NYC was the latest stop on JPEGMafia’s “Lay Down My Life Tour,” named after his latest album “I LAY DOWN MY LIFE FOR YOU” which was released just over a month ago. He was joined by Newark, New Jersey, singer Jane Remover, acting as his opener for the tour.
JPEGMafia spent the first 13 years of his life in Brooklyn before moving around due to both a rough upbringing and military service. Now he resides in Los Angeles and has a complicated relationship with the city where he was born. A large part of this stems from how much New York (Brooklyn, specifically) has changed since he lived here all those years ago. This disdain is the topic of his song “Williamsburg,” which was released in 2018 and laments the gentrification of once historically black areas like the titular Williamsburg neighborhood. “When I left NYC to join the military, it was like a warzone, but when I came back it was like an episode of Will & Grace,” he said in a 2019 interview with Dazed Magazine. “Sure, we have better buildings now, but you pushed out all the original people! You didn’t really improve anything, you just added white people and erased all the black people. Where I grew up in Flatbush, Brooklyn, I didn’t see white people. I came back though and they were everywhere trying to sell me $10 coffee…They don’t realise [sic] they stomped out a lot of people to get here.” Nonetheless, JPEGMafia clarified in an interview with Vice three years later that he still has love for the city he grew up in, saying, “I was born in New York and I hate on New York all the time. But I actually like New York.” Lucky for him, it seems that New York likes him too.
Amari, like most fans, first found out about JPEGMafia through the internet several years ago and is one of the thousands of people who waited in this extremely long line outside of Terminal 5. Although this was his first JPEGMafia concert and only his third concert experience overall, Amari came in with high expectations. “I expect a lot. I’ve seen, like, maybe a couple clips but based off of his rapping performance I expect a lot from Peggy (a nickname that fans often use to refer to the rapper).”
One notable person in attendance was music reviewer Anthony Fantano. Fantano is probably the most well-known music reviewer on the internet right now, with his YouTube channel, “theneedledrop,” amassing close to three million subscribers and over a billion total views over his 15-year career. With Fantano’s considerable influence and clout in the music industry, his review of JPEGMafia’s 2018 breakout album Veteran no doubt played a huge part in putting the experimental rapper/producer on the map. As you can imagine, there’s a large overlap between fans of Anthony Fantano and JPEGMafia, and it didn’t take long for members of the audience to spot Fantano in the building, sitting in a balcony far above the crowd.
JPEGMafia with music reviewer Anthony Fantano after his NYC concert on September 14, 2024. Photo taken from JPEGMafia’s X (Twitter) account.
Despite how respected Fantano is as a reviewer, he’ wasn’t taken quite as seriously as a person. After the initial wave of shock and pleasant surprise wore off, the crowd quickly broke out into jeering chants of the word “bald,” which served as both a reference to his signature look and the title of a fan-favorite JPEGMafia track. Fantano responded by flashing down middle-fingers. This back-and-forth went for about five minutes before the lights dimmed, a guitar instrumental started playing on the speakers, and JPEGMafia finally took the stage donning a big black cowboy hat, a black leather trench coat, and black tactical gloves. It was time for the show to begin.
The two-hour performance was about what you would expect from JPEGMafia if you’re familiar with the chaotic nature of his music, persona, and concerts. His very experimental, increasingly rock-embedded music took the crowd captive, prompting them to jump around in hectic, thrashing mosh pits that swelled in and out like a literal wave of people. Throughout his set, people were being squished together, falling over, getting picked back up, sweating through their clothes, and having to shove their way through the crowd to get to the bar at the back of the venue and rehydrate so they don’t pass out. At the end of the night, people shuffling out of the building had to be careful to avoid a large puddle of vomit in the middle of the floor. To most people, it would probably look (and feel) like hell on Earth, but you couldn’t ignore the palpable sense of satisfaction in the crowd as they were leaving the concert. To them, JPEGMafia was a hometown hero.